Historic Markers in Pennsylvania

Shrewsbury, PA · est. 1993

Born into slavery in Maryland, Amanda Berry Smith gained her freedom when her father purchased the family, who then settled on a farm near Shrewsbury, where she was converted as a child at this church. She became a renowned evangelist and singer whose missionary travels carried her across the United States and on to Britain, India, and Africa. She published a newspaper and founded an industrial home for Black children in Illinois.

Wilkes-Barre, PA · est. 2007

Amedeo Obici arrived in America at twelve, an Italian immigrant with no English, and worked a fruit-store counter before rolling out his own peanut cart on the streets of Wilkes-Barre. In 1906 he and fellow immigrant Mario Peruzzi founded the Planters Peanut Company, and Obici's knack for new roasting and processing methods turned a humble snack into a national brand. Planters' monocled Mr. Peanut became one of the most recognized trademarks in the country, and the company ran its headquarters from Wilkes-Barre from 1925 to 1961.

Menallen Township, PA · est. 2017

In 1817, in the iron-rich hills of Fayette County, ironmaster Isaac Meason and Welsh craftsman Thomas Lewis brought a technique from Wales that would transform American metalmaking. Their puddling furnace and rolling mill burned the carbon out of brittle pig iron to yield tough, workable wrought iron in a single step, making the metal far cheaper and more plentiful just as the young republic began to build with it. The skilled "puddlers" who mastered the roaring furnaces later organized in Pittsburgh as the Sons of Vulcan, an ancestor of today's United Steelworkers.

Hellam Township, PA · est. 1947

In the 1820s, iron was an exotic material for shipbuilding, when nearly every hull afloat was made of wood. Yet in York, machinist John Elgar built the "Codorus," an iron-hulled steamboat, and launched it onto the Susquehanna on November 22, 1825. Named for a nearby creek, the little vessel is remembered as the first iron steamboat built in the United States.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 2001

In 1840 John Wagner carried lager yeast from Bavaria to Philadelphia and brewed what is remembered as the first true lager beer in the United States. Unlike the heavier ales then common, lager was cold-fermented and crisp, and it caught on quickly as waves of German immigrants brought both a taste for it and the skill to make it. Their breweries multiplied through the 19th century, helping build one of America's great industries.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 1997

Inside this Philadelphia building—one of the first constructed specifically for television—a local dance show called "Bandstand" went on the air in 1952. When Dick Clark took over as host in 1956 and the program debuted nationally as "American Bandstand" on ABC in 1957, it became a cultural phenomenon, beaming the latest music and dance steps to teenagers across the country. Broadcast from WFIL-TV here until 1964, it helped define the sound and style of a generation.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 1999

Founded in Philadelphia in 1917, the American Friends Service Committee grew out of the Quaker conviction that faith should be expressed through practical, nonviolent service. From wartime relief to worldwide humanitarian aid, the AFSC's work earned it a share of the 1947 Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the Religious Society of Friends.

Wilkes-Barre, PA · est. 2016

By 1871 the anthracite fields of northeastern Pennsylvania powered much of American industry, but mining remained deadly and technically primitive. That year twenty-two mining professionals met at the Wyoming Valley Hotel in Wilkes-Barre to found the American Institute of Mining Engineers, one of the nation's first engineering societies, aimed at improving safety, training, and technology. From that meeting grew an organization that today counts well over a hundred thousand members worldwide.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 2001

In the fall of 1852, pharmacists from eight states gathered in Philadelphia to found what became the American Pharmaceutical Association, an early attempt to bring order and standards to a trade where the purity of drugs was often anyone's guess. Among the founders was William Proctor, Jr., a Philadelphia druggist and teacher later honored as the "Father of American Pharmacy." Their goal was practical and urgent: to ensure that medicines reaching the public were both safe and honestly made.

Johnstown, PA · est. 2014

On May 31, 1889, the South Fork Dam failed and sent a wall of water into Johnstown, killing thousands in one of the worst disasters of the era. Days later, Clara Barton arrived with volunteers of the American Red Cross, the humanitarian society she had founded, to meet the survivors' needs. Over five months the Red Cross opened feeding stations, built shelters, and gave medical care to some 25,000 people.

Marcus Hook, PA · est. 2002

At Marcus Hook, the American Viscose Company became the first firm in North America to manufacture rayon, the pioneering artificial fiber, on a commercial scale. To house its workforce — many of them women — the company built Viscose Village between 1912 and 1915, a planned community in the English Domestic Revival style designed by the Philadelphia firm of Ballinger and Perrot. The plant's fibers went on to serve countless military uses in both World Wars.

Straban Township, PA

On the rolling farmland east of Gettysburg, this tablet marks where the Amherst (Virginia) Artillery — Kirkpatrick's Battery of Nelson's Battalion — was posted during the three-day battle of July 1863. Attached to the artillery reserve of Ewell's Corps in the Army of Northern Virginia, the battery went into action with a rifled gun and three smoothbore Napoleons in support of Lee's assaults on the Union line. Hundreds of such cast-iron tablets were placed across the field to record exactly where each unit stood.

Bensalem Township, PA · est. 2001

Andalusia was the country estate of Nicholas Biddle (1786–1844), a poet, lawyer, state senator, and agriculturalist best remembered as president of the Second Bank of the United States. His fierce contest with President Andrew Jackson over the Bank's control of the nation's money became one of the defining political battles of the age. Designed with help from architects Benjamin H. Latrobe and Thomas U. Walter, the house blends Regency and Greek Revival styles and was named a National Historic Landmark in 1966.

Schuylkill Township, PA

This burial ground holds the Anderson family and was dedicated by Isaac Anderson, who served as a first lieutenant in the Chester County militia during the Revolution in 1779 and later represented Pennsylvania in Congress from 1805 to 1807. His life traced the arc from citizen-soldier of the Revolution to lawmaker of the early Republic.

Bedford, PA · est. 1951

Built in 1815 as the young republic's commerce reached the mountains, the Anderson House gave Bedford its first bank: the Allegheny Bank of Pennsylvania occupied the east room from 1815 to 1832, and its original vault can still be seen. After its banking days the building found a lasting second act, serving since 1924 as the town's public library and community center. It marks the arrival of formal finance in a once-remote frontier town.

Pittsburgh, PA · est. 1996

Andrew Carnegie arrived from Scotland as a poor immigrant boy and rose to become the steel magnate whose Pittsburgh mills helped power America's industrial age. Preaching a "Gospel of Wealth" that held the rich were duty-bound to give their fortunes away, he funded more than 2,500 libraries and endowed institutions devoted to education and world peace. His philanthropy reshaped access to books and learning across the country and beyond.

Lancaster, PA · est. 1999

Andrew Ellicott was one of the young republic's most accomplished surveyors, astronomers, and mathematicians, helping fix the boundaries of New York, Pennsylvania, and the new federal capital at Washington, D.C. While living in Lancaster and serving the Pennsylvania Land Office, he tutored Meriwether Lewis in surveying and celestial navigation in 1803—skills Lewis would soon carry across the continent on his expedition west.

Bellefonte, PA · est. 1950

On this site was born Andrew G. Curtin, Pennsylvania's Civil War governor. Elected in 1861, he steered the state through the conflict, organizing the celebrated Pennsylvania Reserve Corps and championing the soldiers of the Union. His legacy reached beyond the battlefield: he pushed for State Normal Schools to train teachers and secured funding for State Orphan Schools to care for the children of the war dead.

Somerset, PA · est. 1954

In the years just after the Revolution, the frontier of southwestern Pennsylvania was being carved into towns lot by lot. When Ulrich Bruner first platted Milfordstown in 1787 and Peter Ankeny extended it in 1789, they set aside this ground for two of a young community's most essential needs — a place to bury the dead and a place to worship. By 1795 the growing settlement had taken the name Somerset, the county seat it remains today.

London Grove Township, PA · est. 2008

Born on this Chester County land in 1813, Ann Preston broke barrier after barrier in a world that barred women from medicine. A graduate of the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania, she became its dean in 1865 — the first American woman to hold such a post — and in 1860 founded the Woman's Hospital of Philadelphia, later adding one of the nation's earliest nurses' training schools. A Quaker, she was also an abolitionist tied to the Underground Railroad.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 2022

Anna Elizabeth Dickinson rose from Philadelphia to become one of the most electrifying public speakers of the Civil War era, championing the rights of women, African Americans, and working people. At just 21 she became the first woman to address the U.S. Congress, delivering a speech attended by President Lincoln himself. In an age when women were rarely permitted a public platform, her voice carried into the halls of national power.

Upper Providence Township, PA · est. 2014

Anna Howard Shaw was one of the most powerful voices of the American woman-suffrage movement, a trained physician and ordained minister who traveled the country as a lecturer for the National American Woman Suffrage Association alongside Susan B. Anthony. During World War I she chaired the Women's Committee of the U.S. Council of National Defense, organizing women's contributions to the war effort and earning the Distinguished Service Medal. She made her home near this spot from 1908 until her death in 1919—just months before the ratification of the amendment she had fought so long to secure.

Upper Merion Township, PA · est. 2021

Anna Morris Holstein served as a hospital matron and nurse during the Civil War, tending the wounded at Gettysburg and beyond, then devoted her later years to historic preservation. She led the campaign to acquire and restore Washington's Headquarters and the grounds at Valley Forge — creating Pennsylvania's first state park, now a National Historical Park — and lent her efforts to saving Mount Vernon. As Organizing Regent of the local Daughters of the American Revolution chapter, author, and state building matron at the 1893 World's Fair, she made preservation a public calling.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 2019

Anna Thomas Jeanes was a Philadelphia Quaker who used her wealth to answer some of her era's hardest problems. Her bequest founded the institutions that became Jeanes Hospital and Fox Chase Cancer Center, while her Jeanes Foundation — the Negro Rural School Fund — poured money into education for Black children in the segregated South. She named Booker T. Washington a trustee, and the fund trained the traveling Black teachers known as Jeanes Supervisors.

Bellefonte, PA · est. 2002

Anna Wagner Keichline of Bellefonte broke ground in more ways than one. A Cornell graduate and suffrage advocate, in 1920 she became the first woman registered as an architect in Pennsylvania, designing buildings including the town's Plaza Theatre. She was also a prolific inventor, and during the First World War she served her country as a Special Agent in Army intelligence.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 1994

In an era when women had held the vote for barely a decade, Anne Brancato Wood — the daughter of Italian immigrants — broke into the rough world of Philadelphia Democratic politics in 1928 and won a seat in the Pennsylvania General Assembly in 1932. As one of the very few women in Harrisburg through 1941, she championed social-reform legislation at a time when the New Deal was reshaping what government owed its citizens. Her business offices once stood at this South Philadelphia address.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 2016

In the crowded streets of colonial Philadelphia, a mild-mannered Quaker schoolteacher named Anthony Benezet quietly became one of the most influential abolitionists of his age. From this home he taught free and enslaved Black children in the 1750s and 60s, and in 1754 opened one of the era's earliest schools for girls—radical acts in a city where slavery was still ordinary. His tracts against the slave trade crossed the Atlantic, shaping antislavery thinkers in Britain and America alike.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 2005

From an office on this site, financier Anthony J. Drexel built what the marker calls the world's first trans-Atlantic banking network, channeling European capital into the railroads and enterprises driving America's industrial boom. A noted philanthropist, he also founded the institution that became Drexel University. His firm helped make Philadelphia a hub of Gilded Age finance.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 2015

Anthony Palmer came to Philadelphia in 1705 and built a career as a merchant before rising through colonial government, serving on the provincial council and in judicial posts. He briefly held the colony's highest office as acting governor from 1748 to 1749, using diplomacy with the French, Spanish, and Native nations and working with Benjamin Franklin to fund defenses against coastal privateers. In the 1730s he founded the riverside community of Kensington, now part of Philadelphia.

Amity Township, PA · est. 1966

Anthony Sadowski, a Polish pioneer, settled along the Schuylkill River in this region in 1712, making his living as a trader among the Native peoples of the area. His command of frontier diplomacy led the Provincial Government to employ him as a messenger and interpreter during negotiations with Indian tribes in 1728, and he was buried here in 1736 in the graveyard of St. Gabriel's Church.

Erie, PA · est. 1946

"Mad" Anthony Wayne was one of the boldest field commanders of the Revolution, remembered for his daring bayonet assault at Stony Point. After the war he led the young United States Army to a decisive victory over a Native confederation at Fallen Timbers in 1794. Returning east from that western command, he fell ill and died at the lonely lakeside garrison of Fort Presque Isle in December 1796, and was first buried beside the blockhouse there.

Throop, PA · est. 1994

By 1911 northeastern Pennsylvania's anthracite fields powered the nation, but at a brutal human price. On the morning of April 7, fire broke out at the Pancoast mine in Throop, and seventy-two miners suffocated underground along with a government rescue worker who died trying to save them. The catastrophe pushed the state to act, and that June a new law required that buildings inside coal mines be built of fireproof materials.

Chester, PA

This granite monument marks a point on one of America's strangest borders: the Twelve-Mile Circle, the great arc swung twelve miles out from the old courthouse cupola in New Castle to define Delaware's northern edge — the only truly curved state boundary in the nation. The line traces back to the 1680s, when overlapping royal grants to William Penn and the Calverts set off more than a century of boundary quarrels that even Mason and Dixon could not fully resolve. In 1892 the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey carried out precise field work to re-establish where the arc met the Pennsylvania–Delaware line, and commissioners from both states set this stone to fix the spot. Each face speaks for a different party to the agreement — Delaware to the south, Pennsylvania to the north, the surveyors to the west, and the year 1892 to the east.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 1954

This brick meetinghouse rose in 1804 on ground William Penn had set aside as a Quaker burial place in 1701, at the very heart of the colony he founded as a haven for the Religious Society of Friends. For more than two centuries it has served without interruption as a place of worship and a gathering point for Philadelphia's Quaker community.

Kittanning, PA · est. 1982

Created in 1800, this county was named for General John Armstrong, who in 1756 led a raid that destroyed the Delaware village at Kittanning during the French and Indian War. The county seat took shape on that same ground in 1803. Decades later, in 1881, local ingenuity produced the "Daugherty Visible" typewriter, an early machine that let writers see their words as they typed.

Straban Township, PA

In the first days of July 1863, the fields and farmhouses south and east of Gettysburg were transformed into a vast open-air hospital as the Army of the Potomac's Medical Department fought to save thousands of wounded men. Under the reforms of medical director Jonathan Letterman, the army had built a system of forward field hospitals, ambulance corps, and triage that was tested here at an unprecedented scale. This ground in Straban Township marks where surgeons worked around the clock amid the aftermath of the war's bloodiest battle.

Curwensville, PA · est. 2007

In the small industrial town of Curwensville, engineer Arnold N. Nawrocki solved a problem that quietly reshaped American kitchens: how to package cheese one slice at a time. Working for the Clearfield Cheese Co. in the mid-1950s, he devised the first commercially successful process for individually wrapping cheese slices, earning a patent in 1956. Over his career he accumulated eleven food-processing patents, marking him as one of the unsung inventors of the postwar convenience-food era.

Pittsburgh, PA · est. 2007

Art Blakey grew up in Pittsburgh's vibrant Hill District, a cradle of jazz talent, and got his start with Billy Eckstine's pioneering band. A founder of the driving, blues-soaked style known as hard bop, Blakey led the Jazz Messengers for decades and turned the group into a legendary finishing school for young talent, launching the likes of Freddie Hubbard, Horace Silver, and Wynton Marsalis. His lifetime of achievement was crowned with a Grammy in 2005.

Plymouth, PA · est. 2004

Born in Plymouth to Welsh immigrant parents, Arthur Horace James began working life as a "breaker boy" picking slate from coal in the anthracite mines—the hard entry point for many boys in the Wyoming Valley. He climbed from county district attorney to lieutenant governor and a seat on the state Superior Court, then won the governorship in 1939 and even mounted a run for the 1940 Republican presidential nomination. His rise from the breaker to the statehouse embodied the anthracite region's political culture.

South Versailles Township, PA · est. 2005

Born in the small Allegheny County community of Coulter to an Irish immigrant family, Art Rooney rose to become one of the most beloved figures in American sports. In 1933 he founded the professional football team that became the Pittsburgh Steelers and guided it for more than half a century, culminating in four Super Bowl championships in the 1970s. A gifted athlete and civic leader in his own right, he was enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1964.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 2011

Arthur Lee Hall was a Philadelphia dancer and choreographer who wove African dance, drumming, and cultural tradition into the fabric of American modern dance. From the Ile Ife Black Humanitarian Center, which was both his home and his studio, he trained performers and staged productions that broadened what modern dance could be. His work carried the rhythms and spirit of the African diaspora onto the American stage.

Unity Township, PA · est. 1946

In a quiet hollow south of this spot stood the final home of Arthur St. Clair, a Scottish-born soldier who gave much of his life to the young United States. He fought as a general in the Continental Army, served in the Continental Congress, and became the first governor of the vast Northwest Territory that would one day form the heart of the Midwest. He died in relative obscurity, and his grave lies at Greensburg.

Greensburg, PA · est. 1995

Born in Thurso, Scotland, Arthur St. Clair rose to Major General in the Continental Army during the Revolution and served as President of the Continental Congress in 1787. He was later appointed the first Governor of the Northwest Territory, the vast lands between the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers being opened to American settlement. A longtime Westmoreland County figure, he spent his last years on Chestnut Ridge and is buried just east of this marker.

York, PA · est. 2001

In 1777, with the Revolution's outcome still uncertain and Philadelphia in British hands, the Continental Congress met in the York County Courthouse. There, on November 15, they adopted the Articles of Confederation — the young nation's first written constitution, binding the thirteen states into a single government. The Articles carried the United States through the war and the difficult 1780s until the present Constitution replaced them in 1789.

Ashland, PA · est. 2013

Ashland sat at the heart of Pennsylvania's anthracite coal country, but as the 19th century waned, vanishing jobs scattered its young men across the country in search of work. Their deep loyalty to home gave rise around 1900 to the Ashland Boys' Association, whose Labor Day homecomings drew the far-flung faithful back each year until 1976. During the Great Depression the A.B.A. even raised money for the WPA-built Mothers' Memorial, turning hometown affection into civic good.

Cumberland Township, PA

This monument honors the Ashland (Virginia) Artillery, Woolfolk's Battery, part of Colonel E. P. Alexander's battalion in Longstreet's Corps of the Army of Northern Virginia. Armed with 20-pounder Parrott rifles and Napoleon smoothbores, the battery took its place in the great Confederate gun line at Gettysburg. Alexander's massed artillery anchored the bombardment that preceded the Confederate assault of July 3.

Athens, PA · est. 1947

Where the Chemung meets the Susquehanna, this river junction has funneled travelers for as long as people have moved through the region — long enough that Native peoples knew it as Teaoga, and later generations as Tioga Point. Connecticut settlers laid out a village here in 1786, but a decade earlier the same ground had served as a staging area for General Sullivan's 1779 Revolutionary campaign against the Iroquois towns of central New York. Its position made it, for centuries, the natural gateway between the New York interior and Pennsylvania.

Pittsburgh, PA · est. 2007

On this spot in Pittsburgh's Hill District was born August Wilson, one of the towering American playwrights of the 20th century. He got his start co-founding the Black Horizon Theater before writing his monumental "American Century Cycle"—ten plays, one for each decade of the 1900s—most set among the working people of the very neighborhood that raised him. Two of them, "Fences" and "The Piano Lesson," earned Pulitzer Prizes, and "Fences" took a Tony as well.

Buffalo Township, PA · est. 1947

In the tangled years before Pennsylvania's western boundary was settled, Virginia also claimed this corner of the Ohio Country and governed it as part of its own frontier district. In August 1776, as the Revolution was just beginning, the first court west of the Monongahela River convened here under that Virginia authority. The rival colonial claims to the same rich land would not be resolved until the Mason-Dixon line was extended westward.

Trappe, PA · est. 1947

Built in 1743, Augustus Lutheran Church at Trappe is celebrated as the oldest unchanged Lutheran church building in America. It was raised by Henry Melchior Muhlenberg, the German-born patriarch who organized scattered Lutheran congregations into a unified American church and is often called the father of American Lutheranism. Muhlenberg died in 1787 and lies buried in the churchyard beside his enduring work.

Keating Township, PA · est. 1994

On September 30, 1911, the concrete dam of the Bayless Pulp and Paper Company — built only two years earlier, nearly fifty feet high and 534 feet long — gave way, hurling a wall of water and debris down Freeman Run into the towns of Austin and Costello. At least 78 people were killed and the mill towns were devastated. Pennsylvania's second-worst single-dam disaster, it spurred a 1913 state law to regulate dam construction.

Pittsburgh, PA · est. 1968

Founded in 1849 by Charles Avery—a Methodist lay preacher, businessman, and committed abolitionist—Avery College offered a classical education to African Americans at a time when such opportunity was almost universally denied them. Located on Pittsburgh's North Side, it became an important institution for Black advancement and a center of antislavery sympathy in the decades before the Civil War. Avery devoted much of his fortune to the education and uplift of the people the nation still held in bondage.

Plymouth Township, PA · est. 1994

On September 6, 1869, fire erupted at the Avondale Colliery near Plymouth, and because the mine had only a single shaft — which doubled as its only escape route — the trapped miners had no way out. The death toll reached 110, including five boys aged twelve to seventeen and two would-be rescuers who suffocated in the attempt. The horror spurred Pennsylvania's legislature to pass safety laws in 1870, among the earliest of their kind.

Wyalusing Township, PA · est. 1947

On the broad plain below this overlook, French émigrés fleeing the Revolution built an improbable frontier refuge between 1793 and 1803. Called Azilum (French for 'asylum'), the settlement included a large timber 'Great House' that local tradition linked to hopes of sheltering Queen Marie Antoinette and her son. The queen never came, and within a decade most colonists drifted away, but for a moment the Pennsylvania wilderness held a transplanted piece of aristocratic France.

Wysox Township, PA · est. 1947

This marker points travelers toward Azilum, the French refugee colony founded a few miles south along the Susquehanna in the 1790s. Fleeing the guillotine and the revolts of the French Revolution and its Caribbean colonies, the exiles carved out a village on the frontier and raised 'La Grande Maison' — a house whose builders imagined it might one day shelter the French queen and the young heir to the throne. The royal guests never arrived, and the colony faded within a decade.

Lancaster, PA · est. 1971

From 1773 to 1780, Francis Bailey ran a printing office on this Lancaster site, serving as official printer to both the Continental Congress and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. In an age when the press was a weapon of revolution, his shop turned out patriot documents—including Thomas Paine's "Crisis No. 4," one of the essays meant to steel American resolve through the darkest stretch of the war. Bailey is also credited with being among the first to call George Washington "Father of His Country" in print.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 2000

From its opening in 1887 until 1938, Baker Bowl was the home of the Philadelphia Phillies, and after a rebuilding in 1895 it was praised as the finest ballpark in the country. Its grandstands witnessed a remarkable run of firsts and lasts — the first World Series game attended by a U.S. president in 1915, the Negro League World Series of 1924–26, and Babe Ruth's final major league game in 1935. Razed in 1950, the park lives on only in memory and this marker.

Altoona, PA · est. 1947

Baker Mansion is a striking Greek Revival house built in 1846 for Elias Baker, one of the region's leading ironmasters in the era when Pennsylvania's charcoal-fired furnaces helped forge the nation's iron. Its columned dignity reflected both the wealth and the ambitions of the industrialists who ran the Juniata Valley iron trade. The house now serves as the museum and home of the Blair County Historical Society.

Altoona, PA · est. 1947

Erected between 1844 and 1847 to a design by Baltimore architect Robert Cary Long, Jr., this Greek Revival mansion was the home of ironmaster Elias Baker and his family from 1848 until 1914. The house captures the taste and standing of the men who dominated the Juniata Valley iron trade in the mid-19th century. Since 1922 it has served as the museum of the Blair County Historical Society.

Milesburg, PA · est. 1947

Where Spring and Bald Eagle Creeks meet stood a Delaware Indian village named for the noted Munsee chief Woapalanne, whose name translates to "Bald Eagle." During the Revolutionary era this settlement was a staging point for raids against frontier settlements, part of the brutal borderland warfare that engulfed central Pennsylvania. The chief's name endures across the region today in creeks, mountains, and towns.